Picking up the phone I barely suppress my sigh of irritation as I hear my daughter Janey, 15, at the other end asking me for a lift. It’s raining and she doesn’t want to get wet. I’ve already had to clear her room of all the mugs and plates plastered with caked-on food, and I’m sure she’ll soon be up in arms because her favourite top isn’t washed – despite the fact that I’ve told her she’s old enough to do her own laundry now.
Meanwhile my 17-year-old son, Freddy, who’s away with the boys, texted me earlier with a request for more money as he lived it up on holiday in Portugal. Not to mention the stress I feel that he’ll get too drunk and forget my instruction not to swim after a boozy session. 
That’s just a typical day of motherhood – when you’re cook, cleaner, skivvy and piggy bank. Frankly it’s a thankless task and one I never really wanted. 

I wasn’t one of those young girls who dreamt of getting married and being a mum. I wanted to travel the world and enjoy my career in PR. 
But then I met George at a party, we fell in love and got married in 2001. We were on holiday in 2002 when I realised I’d missed a period and the test confirmed the worst – I was pregnant. 
Our holiday had been wonderful and I felt as though I’d opened a doorway to hell by getting pregnant – I’d had a bug so my contraceptive pill had failed. 
It didn’t feel right to have a termination, we were married and could cope financially. I felt we just had to step up and I presumed that just because I couldn’t hear my biological clock ticking it would kick in eventually. 
But I hated every moment of being pregnant, I felt sick constantly and put on 5st in my efforts to eat away the nausea. My labour was horrendous and ended with an emergency c-section. 
Having said that as soon as I laid eyes on my son I fell in love with him, completely and utterly. But he didn’t sleep for three years and I was absolutely shattered. 
Despite this, two years later I got pregnant again – this time deliberately. I was an only child and had always wanted a sibling, so I did it for Freddy. That’s the thing with motherhood, you sacrifice so much of yourself for your children. I actually had another child to make the first one happier, not because I wanted one. Though there was an element of ‘in for a penny, in for a pound’.

I remember when Freddy was born, the midwives and nurses didn’t call me ‘Polly’ but ‘mum’. That’s what it’s like, your identity completely changes. 
 Those early years were tough. Nothing compares to the relentlessness of a crying baby, sleeping nights and toddler tantrums. My career went on the backburner while my husband’s thrived. I felt resentful and angry despite it being the most sensible way to manage the financial demands of family life. 
I wasn’t one of those mums that was full of awe for any new tooth or word. Playgroups bored me and I’d count down the hours until it was bedtime and I could unwind with a glass of wine and my television programmes rather than Peppa Pig on a loop. 
My resentment and the stress contributed to the end of my marriage in 2012, though it’s simplistic to say the children were entirely to blame. 

In a strange way being a single mum was easier, at least I didn’t feel resentful when my husband worked late or disappeared on a golfing trip. I knew where I was.
But the sheer monotony of the school run, helping with homework then fighting to get them to bed on time blighted the next few years. I’m tied down to routines, any travelling is confined to the school holidays, I particularly resented swapping backpacking round exotic places for hotels with easy access to water parks. Now that they’re teens thankfully that particular form of hell is over. But of course it comes with teenage hormones and moodiness.
And there are of course moments of sheer joy. It probably sounds as though I don’t love them, I do. I absolutely adore them, I would do anything for them and I desperately want them to be happy. But with that comes so much worry. I remember Freddy breaking his leg and being in agony and I would have done anything to be the one in pain. Another time Janey was being bullied and I’ve never felt such rage as I did towards the girls that were bullying her.

That’s the thing with motherhood – it’s an emotional roller coaster and everything matters so much more. You can’t feel truly happy unless they are. And it’s rare that both are content at the same time. 
Sometimes I think I’d like to put my kids in the deep freeze for a while so I can re energise and regain my equilibrium. 
But mostly I wish I’d never had them at all – I might not have felt such incredible love, but I wouldn’t have had the lows either. And after all you can’t miss what you’ve never had. I loved my previous life and think I’d have been perfectly happy carrying on with it. 
I don’t think enough women talk about just how tough motherhood is and we don’t normalise choosing to be child free enough. Having children is a life-long commitment. But you only find out definitively that it isn’t for you once you’ve had them – you can’t put them back!